Table of Contents
When your computer has finished booting up, and after entering your login data, you will arrive at the Xubuntu desktop. It comes with many features that make your life easy and it is well worth the time to get to know your way around it.
Your desktop has two panels: one on top, which is always visible, and one at the bottom of the screen, which is hidden when not in use.
The top panel is mainly used for starting applications and navigating to different
places on your computer. It also comes with an Action button,
Workspace Switcher, Notification Area and a
clock. Clicking on will open the Applications Menu,
offering you many choices of applications to start. Note that you can also access the
Settings Manager, Help, and a logout dialog from the
menu. Clicking on the Action button (your username in the upper
right) will bring up a menu with choices for logging out, shutting down, locking the
screen, switching users and, depending on your hardware, suspending or hibernating your
computer.
To the left of the Action button is the Workspace Switcher which looks like two colored rectangles. Clicking on these allows you to instantly switch between two different workspaces which can each contain different running applications. If you're used to running many applications simultaneously, this is a handy way to keep your screen from getting too crowded.
To the left of the clock is the Notification Area. Here you will see icons displaying the status of your network connection and the system sound volume. Other notification icons may appear as necessary, for instance when software updates are available.
At the bottom of the screen is a hidden panel called the Launcher Panel. To see this panel, drag your mouse to the bottom of the screen and pause there. As the name indicates, the purpose of this panel is to provide you with a quick way to launch any of the most commonly used Xubuntu applications with a single click. Hovering over each icon with your mouse will display the name of the application.
The default desktop has just three icons on it: Home, File System and Trash (icons for removable devices, like CDs or flash drives, will also appear if any of those devices are present). You can customize your desktop by right-clicking in a blank area and choosing
. From here you can change the wallpaper and modify menu and icon behavior.Xubuntu comes with Xfce's file manager called Thunar. For
simplicity's sake, we will just refer to it as the File Manager. Load it from
→ → or by double-clicking the Home or File
System icons on your desktop.
The File Manager's default view consists of a shortcut pane on the left side, the main area on the right, and a pathbar above the main area. The shortcut pane provides shortcuts to different folders on your system. The first shortcut under PLACES will lead to your home directory, the directory where you store all your personal data, and will therefore have the name of the current user. That directory will probably appear empty. The File System shortcut under DEVICES will take you to the root of your filesystem. You may want to explore it a bit, even though it will be confusing to you if you are new to Linux. Just click on the different folders and see what's inside. When you're done, return to your home directory by clicking on the top shortcut.
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You can add your own shortcuts by simply dragging folders to the shortcut pane. This will allow you to access important folders instantly! |
The main area will always display the contents of the current folder. Double-click on folders to enter them, and right-click on files/folders to get a pop-up window offering you some choices of what to do with them. Select multiple files by dragging a rectangle over them with the mouse. Alternatively, select one file, hold down the Shift key, and increase/decrease the selection using the arrow keys.
To easily see the path you took to get to the current directory, you can change the default View options. From the File Manager menu, select
→ → . Now you can click on any pathbar icon to change to the directory it represents. Note that right-clicking on pathbar icons will also bring up a pop-up window with some options.To create a new document, right-click on some empty space in your home directory and select
→ from the pop-up menu. The File Manager will prompt you for a name. Just go with the suggested name for now. After this, you will see the new file in your home directory. Right-click on it and choose . This will show you some details about the file. Right-click on the file once more and choose to remove it. The file will be put into the Trash.
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If you ever want to undo the deleting of a file, open Trash, right-click the file and click . |
To create a new folder, right-click on the empty space, and choose . You will see this new folder in your home directory. Double-click on it to enter it. To rename or remove the folder, right-click on it and choose the appropriate option from the pop-up menu. Enter
. You will be prompted for a name. Type something and hitTo copy and move files on your computer, just click and drag files and folders to other folders.
When inserting CDs, USB sticks or other removable media into your computer, or hooking up removable devices like a music player, Xubuntu should automatically detect the new device. For example, after inserting a CD into your optical drive, you will see a new shortcut in the left pane of the File Manager representing the CD. Clicking on it will open the CD in the main area, just like clicking on a regular folder. To remove the CD, right-click on the shortcut, and choose . The same applies for any other removable media.
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Please note that pressing the eject button on your CD drive may not work. This may be surprising to some users, but it is in fact the expected behavior. Before the CD can be ejected, it needs to be properly "released" (unmounted) by the system. To remove a CD, always right-click on its shortcut and choose . |
There are many ways to customize the File Manager. If you do not like the way the icons are displayed, choose → to have the contents of the current directory displayed as a list.
You can have the File Manager display a location bar instead of the pathbar by selecting → → . If you prefer a tree view in the left pane, choose → → .
If you want to customize the appearance of your Xubuntu system, the options are unlimited. Here are a few good starting points.
To change your wallpaper to any of the other default wallpapers:
Right-click the desktop
From the context menu, select
In the Background tab, select a new wallpaper image
If you have multiple monitors, you will have another set of tabs under Background; use these to specify which monitor's wallpaper you want to change.
If you have multiple monitors, you can set the wallpaper on the primary monitor to stretch across all monitors.
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If you want to add one or more of your images in this list for future use, you
can copy or symlink them to |
If you want to set any of your own images as the wallpaper, the easiest way to achieve this is:
Open Thunar and navigate to the directory with the image
Right-click the image and select
from the context menu
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With multiple monitors, this setting will only change the primary monitor's wallpaper. To change the wallpaper for other monitors, you will need to use the dialog described above. |
If you don't like the default panel configuration, including the positioning or the applets installed by default, follow the steps below to customize the panel configuration:
Right-click any panel
From the context menu, select
→At the top of the dialog, you can select which panel to edit, add a new panel or delete an existing panel
In the Display tab, you can control the selected panel appearance
In the Items tab, you can control the selected panel applets and other items
There are three types of desktop themes:
xfwm themes - control how your window borders look. To change your xfwm
theme, go to → → . In the Style tab, select
a new theme to change the window borders appearance.
GTK themes - control how the content of the windows look. To change your
GTK theme, go to → → . In the Style tab, select
a new theme to change the window content appearance. The tool gtk-theme-config will also allow you to customize your window look.
Icon themes - control how your icons look. To change your icon theme, go
to → → . In the Icons tab, select a new theme
to change the icon appearance. Note that not all icon sets will work well with dark
panel/window backgrounds!
If the default selection of themes doesn't satisfy you, you can download and install new themes. Some new themes can be installed from the Ubuntu repositories, and more can be found on the Internet, for example on Xfce-look.org.
If you install new themes from the repositories, they should appear automatically in the Settings Manager. If you download a theme from any other site, you need to install the theme before it will appear in the Settings Manager. To do this, extract the theme package and copy them to:
xfwm and GTK themes:
(this user only) /home/username/.themes/
(all users) /usr/share/themes/
Icon themes:
(this user only) /home/username/.icons/
(all users) /usr/share/icons/
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If these directories do not exist, you should create them first. Copying themes for all users will require administrative privileges. |
While Xubuntu doesn't come with many desktop effects, the Xfce compositor is enabled
by default. In the default Xubuntu configuration, the Xfce compositor is used to draw
shadows for windows and to enable translucent panels. If you have a low-end GPU or you
don't like the desktop effects mentioned, you can turn off the compositor or change the
settings by navigating to → → and in the
Compositor tab either unticking Enable display
compositing or modifying settings.